‘‘Alvin Gentry is a good coach and a good person,’’ Suns vice president of basketball operations Lon Babby said from the US Airways Center. ‘‘He was the perfect coach for our previous group. But with the current group, all of us, including Alvin himself, realized that it just wasn’t working, the pieces just weren’t fitting.’’

Phoenix’s head coach since Terry Porter was fired at the All-Star break in 2009, Gentry got the Suns back to the freewheeling ways of former coach Mike D'Antoni, his onetime boss.

The fast-paced style worked early on, with the Suns going 54-28 and reaching the Western Conference finals in Gentry’s first full season as coach.

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